Two lives remain intertwined

Adopted daughter sets out to make her own life.

Betty Stuart was back in South Bend, and her adopted daughter, Mechi, was now on her own.

The then-18-year-old was ready to be independent and took off with her friends.

Mechi and some friends headed to Florida in a van, looking for adventure.

She and her friends were determined to live life to the fullest.

"I never worried about anything," Mechi says now. "I knew my friends cared about me and would look out for me wherever we went."

They stayed in Florida for a month or so and then headed to the Rainbow Fest in Venice, Calif., where all the hippies hung out. They traveled across the country "and had a blast," she says.

But their money ran out, and they began to feel desperate. One of Mechi's friends persuaded her to go out and panhandle for money.

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"I stood out there for a while and I really didn't like asking for money because Mom sent me money," Mechi says now. "So I put in $20 of my own money and took it to them."

She was growing tired of sleeping outside and in tents. Her wild life was taking its toll. So in October 1993, she called her mother.

Mechi asked whether she could come home.

Betty's reply: Yes, of course, but she'd better not have lice. After all, she'd been living in a "hippie commune" in California.

Mechi did have head lice, as it turned out, but her mother took her into the basement and cleaned her up, as she did more than 35 years ago when the toddler first came down from the mountain.

Betty says she allowed her daughter to lie around the house for a month before demanding she find a job -- or leave.

Mechi left, deciding to go back to Arizona. But she came home for good in 1994. "I never left Mom again," she says.

Mechi was newly motivated and went through vocational rehabilitation and she trained for jobs. Over the years, she has supported herself by working at a dry cleaners, as a mail delivery person at a local company, and even as a greeter at Walmart. She met her boyfriend -- now her husband -- Brian nine years ago, introduced by her cousin. The two soon moved in together.

"I really like Mechi because she is so kind and never really argues," Brian Roeder says. "She is just a good person who has taken her struggles and made the best of them."

In 2007, Mechi gave birth to their daughter, Briana. She is the joy and light of their world.

"I was just sitting at work one day thinking and I thought it was time to ask Mechi to marry me," Brian says. "So I bought her a ring and put it around her neck (on a chain) and asked her to marry me."

She said yes, and they were married on May 15, 2006.

Mechi is happy, although she knows more hard times are in their future. She was diagnosed about five years ago with SCA2, a rare genetic disorder that affects her balance and mobility. The disease will likely eventually put her in a wheelchair.

Betty, who is now 85, worries about what will happen when she's no longer around to help the little girl who stole her heart thousands of miles away.

But that same little girl who learned to live without hands does not fear the future.

"I believe that attitude is everything," Mechi says.

She tries to look at the bright side. She knows other people face their own challenges every day, too.

"I just want people to know you don't have to have hands to feel," she says slowly, choosing her words carefully. "I feel with my heart every day."